This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah Treisman

fiction at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice we'll hear Brian

Washington read his story visitor from the January 20th 2020 issue of the magazine.

Washington is a National Book Award 535 honoree.

His first story collection, Lott, was published last year.

Now here's Brian Washington.

Visitor.

He knocked on my door about a month after the funeral.

I almost didn't answer since I wasn't expecting my fuck buddy.

It was entirely too late for anyone to be visiting, but the man in front of me said he'd

been a friend of my father's, and I slipped on the face I wore for those people. It was three or four in the morning. He'd caught a late flight

from Kingston to Houston. Then the man said something else in a heavy patois. I asked him to repeat it.

His lover, this guy said, rubbing both of his elbows.

I made a new kind of face,

except it couldn't have been a new kind of face, except it couldn't have been a new kind of face.

We only get so many.

What? I said. It's true, he said.

No. It's true, he said. No, I said, and then I laughed.

The man asked to come in.

He said his duffel on the carpet and his jacket beside it and the doorway was crammed so we stood and that's when I got a good look at him.

Mid-50s, Asian, short hair, messy and curly, sloped just below the nape of his neck.

His boots were too large, his track pants were too tight.

...